


To The Lighthouse

by Anonymous



Category: IT (1990), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Coming Out, Depressed Richie Tozier, Fix-It, M/M, Minor benverly, Reluctant Psychic Stan Uris, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Stanley Uris Lives, Stephen King References, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Surreal, The Turtle (IT) CAN Help Us, all of the other Losers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-16 21:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21043202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Richie is the first one at Stan's bedside, when the Losers finish with Derry, and the only one who's right there when he wakes from his coma-- and it's just as well, because when he does, it's with a message for Richie alone.Richie's life is in shambles anyway, so he's got nothing better to do than go wherever the turtle wants to send him.





	1. The Turtle Sent Me

Stan is still in a coma when Richie arrives, desperate in a way he hadn’t anticipated. Not to see Stan, which he’d known he’d have to do after the end of the whole mess, but to talk to his wife.

“I’m sorry.” He tells her, and he has flowers that are more for her than for Stan, because she found him. She found him in all that blood, and struggled to hold him together long enough for help to arrive, and there are feelings no one else will ever understand and Patty Uris will come the closest. “Is he…?”

“Doctors think he’ll wake up soon. You’re one of his old friends? Stan’s never been able to remember his childhood-- must have been in some kind of accident in high school, but I don’t know. So-- I can’t promise he’ll know you.”

“If he wakes up and makes it, I don’t care how much he remembers. I remember him now, that’s… I just-- when I heard, I-- I had to finish something up, and then… Wow, he looks just the same.” He takes one of the two chairs, puts his hand over Stan’s. Except for the darker hair, there’s so much of child Stan visible in him. “Stan the Man… he’s-- is he happy, I mean, aside from this? He was such a weird kid, but he was my best friend. I was a weird kid.”

“I thought he was. We were going on vacation… and then-- I don’t know. He… he was sorry about-- he was upset, a little, a while back-- He thought it was his fault we couldn’t have kids, but we… we stopped trying, we got over it. I thought we got over it. I don’t know. Nothing much really _ upsets _ Stan, not like this.”

“He’ll be okay, then. Look, I get it, sometimes… sometimes you just have one bad day, crazy day, you make one mistake, but… he’ll be okay. You guys are lucky-- I mean, I know this is a fucking terrible time, but he’s lucky he found you, you’re lucky he’s pulling through this, and-- _ fuck_, I just-- You’re going to be all right. You guys… I don’t know. I can see how much you love this guy. Sorry, you can tell me to shut it, it’s gotta be weird for you, total stranger getting all emotional on you because he knew your husband when they were kids…”

“No, no, I’m glad you could come out here. One of his other friends said he’d be swinging through and about three more asked if I could call when he wakes up. I just think it’s so nice you all remember him so fondly. He’s such a good man. And he’s-- _ oh_.”

Richie pats her shoulder, flashing her a sad smile. 

“I, uh… yeah. We all got together, to help out with a thing, back home, and… Wow, _ Stan_, it’s like there was a hole there without him.” He takes a shaky breath. “I’ll stick around until he’s awake, I want to catch up… let him know things are good. Maybe-- maybe-- man. There’s so much stuff I want to tell him. Twenty-seven years, and I trust this guy with stuff I haven’t talked to anyone about as an adult. But he’s the same old Stan. He still have his birds?”

“He loves his birds.” Patty laughs. “He’s up at the crack of dawn for those birds. I just-- I just don’t understand…”

“Memory stuff, maybe. Getting the same call we all got, and… having those gaps. Feeling lost. I don’t blame him. We, uh… we were kind of in the same incident, as kids? I lost a lot of memories, for a while. It messes you u, even when you think you’re dealing with it. And it’s terrifying when they first start to come back, but-- but then, you know…”

“Does it get any better?”

“Yeah. No. Yeah. Some things. Hey, if talking to someone about it will help, I’m sticking around. If he doesn’t want to, that’s fine, if he does…” He shrugs. “Stan the Man…”

For a while, they sit in silence, and then she asks him what Stan was like as a boy, what he remembers, and he’s more than happy to spend the rest of visiting hours regaling her-- stories about Stan’s weird brand of wit, stories about when he’d dragged them out birdwatching and they didn’t see the point but they’d done it for Stan. He tells her about his riotous Bar Mitzvah, and his flawless Paul Anka impression, perfected after hours spent listening to his mother’s old records. He talks himself hoarse, and she laughs and awws and mentions Mike had promised to have some old photos

She hugs him, when he has to go. He doesn’t know why it feels as good as it does, but then he thinks he hadn’t known much, since the whole thing had started, he’d only _ felt_.

The second day is like the first, only it’s her turn to tell more stories, and to fill him in on what adult Stan is like. His routines, his birds, his love of order and setting things right. How he follows baseball and slow dances in the kitchen with her while dinner cooks. How he loves his job, how he volunteers on weekends, working with kids, and she’d hoped it eased the sting of not having their own-- how she’d feared perhaps it had made it harder after all.

“He just needs to pull through this now.” Richie says, the thing they’ve taken to repeating to each other between the stories. “He’s got a good life, he had a bad night. He had one really awful moment, and then he regretted it, he called for help-- that tells me he wants to live. That at the very lowest point, he discovered he wanted to live after all. I know stand-up comedians aren’t known for being experts on much, but ,um… this kind of thing, I-- I know a few guys, who’ve been there. There’s a difference between being there once, and being there all the time.”

Patty nods. “He-- he’s not the type of husband who hides things-- not normally. He talks about his feelings. This… it came out of nowhere, he doesn’t lie to me about how he’s doing. I know he can’t always be open, with everything he doesn’t know about himself, but I know that. And maybe seeing someone, after this, maybe that will be what he needs.”

“I think it’s a good idea. I’ll probably wind up doing the same, honestly-- and if he needs to talk about weird memory stuff, he’ll have my number before I go. That’s one thing I can do… I get how the memory shit makes life a nightmare sometimes.”

“However much he does remember, when he wakes up, I think that’ll help.” She smiles, and her hand wraps gently around Stan’s ankle, through his hospital blanket.

“Any hour of the day, and I’ll get back as soon as I can if it comes when I’m working. Or sleeping, if I sleep. Any time at all. Hear that, buddy?” He pats one still hand, the one without an IV line. “You’ve got a direct line to ol’ Trashmouth, for what that’s worth.”

It’s on the third day that Stan wakes. It happens while Richie is there, while he’s retelling the Great Rock War. Patty had told him when he’d got in that Stan had been stirring and then when he’d been at the climax of his story, Stan’s voice broke through, rough and scratchy.

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“Stan?”

“Stanley!”

“Richie Tozier, you got… hit in the head right away. You… you got hit right off...”

“Hey, man, I wanted your wife to think I’m cool.” He grins, waiting for Patty to finish giving him a couple dozen kisses before he moves in closer to ruffle his hair gently. “It’s really good to see you, buddy. Been a while. You remember, then?”

“I think.”

“I’ll go grab a nurse. We’ll catch up in a minute.” Richie gives his hand a squeeze before stepping out, giving them a little time to themselves. He manages to intercept a nurse before too long, and he has to wait outside a while so he can do his thing, but Stan is in slightly better shape when he does get in again, his voice sounds less raspy, his eyes look more alert.

“How was the-- reunion?” He asks, and Richie sees the flicker of apprehension.

“Mostly good… it’s all taken care of, the, uh-- that favor Mike needed while we were back in town? Ben and Bev got together. Mike’s gonna be here before too long. The others-- I’ll call them and tell them you’re awake and they’ll come.” He says, and then grief twists his face and he has to fight back a sob. “Eddie didn’t, uh-- Eddie didn’t make it. There was an… accident, he-- oh, fuck, he-- But everyone else is going to come, I just--”

“Eddie… was it a car accident?”

“No, no, a-- a freak thing, a, uh… house came down, he--”

Stan nods, understanding. A sign that Richie is allowed to stop, only now he _ can’t _ stop.

“I never told him… I never told _ anyone… shit_.”

“Richie… I’m sorry. I know how close you two always...”

“I came here to make you feel better and now look at me…”

“You’re really remembering everyone?” Patty asks, her hand smoothing over Stan’s forehead. “Everything?”

“It was just flashes before, impressions. Things in dreams that felt like memory. But I woke up remembering everything.” He nods. “Eddie was Richie’s best friend.”

“You were always my best friend.” He shakes his head. “Eddie was… different. He was-- I loved him. Not-- not the way I-- I mean I was--”

“In love.” Stan reaches for his hand. “Yeah. I think I remember that, too.”

“I’ve never said it out loud before.”

“You two were… I mean, you were a disaster, but you-- you were… Yeah. I don’t think I ever put it in words to myself, but I knew. I don’t think any of us would have judged you, even back then.”

“Thanks. I, um, I’d better call the gang, give you two another minute, but-- but thanks.”

Stan squeezes his hand before letting him go, and Richie stumbles out to the closest point where he’s allowed to use his phone.

Ben and Bev are easy to reach-- he just has to get one of them to get them both, they put him on speaker. He feels buoyed by their excited reactions to the good news-- Stan’s awake, he remembers them, he’s worlds better than he was, than he might have been.

“Hey, um, as long as I’ve got you…” He sinks down onto a bench. He could pace giving the news about Stan but now his legs don’t want to hold him up. “I-- Can I tell you something? Something I didn’t get to say, before.”

“Richie…” Ben’s voice is heavy with understanding already. “Yeah, of course. You can tell us _ anything_, you know that.”

“Cool, cool. Cool cool cool. So I’m gay. What’s new with you?”

“Honey.” Bev sighs. “Honey, that’s great.”

“It’s really not.”

“Well… it’s great you felt ready to say it. It’s great you trusted us enough to tell us.”

“It’s just… Eddie.” Ben finishes.

“Yeah.”

“Richie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, when we--”

“Would it have changed things?”

“We could have tried to carry him. I’m so sorry we didn’t. We didn’t think we could, but it… but then we wound up carrying you, so maybe… that’s what eats me up, thinking we could have all along and we just didn’t. We could have. I--”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault, man. You wanted the rest of us to make it out alive. You kept me alive. I can’t exactly be mad about that. I mean… I got to talk to Stan. I… maybe it gets… easier with time.”

“We’ll see you soon, honey.” Bev says. “You _ will _ be okay. Even if it takes time. We love you, okay?”

“See you guys soon. Love you.”

Well… two down. He takes a deep breath and then a few more, before he calls Bill. 

“Stan’s up. He’s gonna be okay.”

“Oh, thank God. I’ll be there-- I’ll find a flight-- next one out.”

“Ben and Bev are heading this way, too. So’s Mike, on his road trip, but I’ll give him a call anyway. Hey, uh-- Bill, I-- there’s something I’ve been-- I’ve been getting off my chest lately, with everyone, um… if this is an okay time?”

“Shoot.”

“I’ve been, uh… I’m coming out. Of the closet. As a, uh, as a gay guy. Which maybe you already knew, I don’t know. I mean, Stan and Ben were very unsurprised, so maybe I’ve never been _ in _ the closet, or--”

“Breathe. Richie, breathe. Hey, that’s-- I’m glad you told me.”

“Did you know?”

“I remember there were rumors, back… middle school? High school? But I didn’t take it seriously, it was just Bowers being a shit. Kids being mean. And I mean-- I don’t think I really knew what it _ meant _ then, not really. I didn’t think about it.”

“You didn’t notice me being super gay?”

“No. But nothing was going to make us not friends. I mean, we fought that summer, but even that--”

“Okay. Well. Yeah, just-- high time I said it, really. I-- that’s what I was afraid of. The thing he used to get me with. That if you all knew, you’d abandon me, that my folks wouldn’t love me anymore, that I’d be a dead man. And I just thought… I don’t need to be afraid anymore. It can’t hurt me, nothing-- nothing can ever hurt me, or scare me, any worse than what I’ve been through now. And I want my friends to know the real, whole me.”

“Good for you. Hey… when I get in, I’ll buy you a drink-- if no one beats me to your first coming out celebration.”

“You can buy me one even if they do. Hey, Bill?”

“Yeah?”

“I-- Eddie--”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” He says again, impossibly soft. “I’ll call you when I get in. I’ll b-buy you that d-d-drink.”

“Yeah.”

That leaves Mike, and so far, so good. He reminds himself that this is _ Mikey_, and he’ll be just as supportive as everyone else. He makes the call.

“Any change with Stan?” Mike asks, right off.

“He’s awake. I told him you were already heading his way. The others are coming now.”

“I’ll reach you tomorrow night, late. How’s his wife holding up?”

“She’s really good-- she’s glad to have him up and alert. She’s really glad the gang’s all coming-- thinks it’ll be good for him to have us there. We’ve been trading Stan stories, he’s… I mean, he’s _ exactly _ what you’d think. He was _ born _ to be a forty year old accountant.”

“Can’t wait to see him. And to really meet her.”

“She’s a swell lady. Also, I’m gay. Shit, can I take that over, I feel like I could do a better job, I’ve been coming out to everyone and I--”

“Yeah, I’ll pretend it’s a surprise, take it from the top.” Mike chuckles. “You’re having a day for news.”

“Yeah. Okay. Okay. Hey, Mikey, can I tell you something?”

“Go for it, man.”

“I am… one hundred percent super duper gay, and I’m ready to say it, and I’m done being afraid.”

“I never knew that.” He says drily, laughs when Richie does. “Good for you, Rich. You deserve to be free now.”

“You-- you’d be the expert on being free now, with-- with _ It _ gone. I-- I was telling Bill, that was-- I couldn’t tell you guys the truth then, about how I saw him and what he used against me, because so much of what I was afraid of was losing you guys, if you knew.”

“I wish I’d known. Could have told you you were safe with me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s the message I’m getting.”

“My first kiss was a guy. I mean, it was, you know, we called it ‘practice’ back then, but I thought it was as nice as a girl would be. I think-- I mean… we could have talked about stuff. Or-- we can still talk about stuff.”

“Like how insanely hot Ben is now?”

“Ben looks good. Bill looks good.”

“You look good.” Richie adds. “Everyone got hot but me, man.”

“You’re fine. If you got more sleep and cleaned up a little? Show off your good points? You could get guys. I mean, if you’re ready to date. I get needing some time after coming out before that’s comfortable, but you could definitely get ‘em.”

“I’m not.” He sobers. “I might not be. Um, ever.”

“Rich--”

“No. It’s… I can’t. Emotionally, I just…”

“Ah. Hey, that’s okay, too. You can be out and proud and celibate, if that’s what you’re comfortable with. But… if you ever want to clean up, put on a shirt that shows off those guns, and go out, you don’t have to take someone home. You can just let a guy boost your ego, flirt a little, dance a little…”

Maybe Mike has a point, Richie guesses. It would be nice to actually flirt with a man, even if the thought of anything more than a quick compliment in passing leaves a sick, heavy sorrow on his heart. But he could go out, and he could give himself permission to notice if a man is handsome, and not feel unfaithful to Eddie’s memory. Once he’s out of the lowest depths of mourning, he could do all that.

“When you hit the west coast, I will let you make me over and we can go flirt with guys.” He snorts. “I’ll be your wingman if you want-- not that _ you _ need it, I’m pretty sure you can bench me, talk about guns.”

“I’ll hold you to that. And if you ever need an excuse not to go home with someone, I don’t mind if you say you’re going home with me. We’ll cut loose a little, far away from Derry.”

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s-- I’m not over him. I might… I might not _ get _ over him.”

“That’s okay, too. There’s no timeline for grief.”

“Eddie.”

“I know. Richie… maybe there’s nothing anyone can say that will ever make it better, but… of all the ways he could have gone, I think… I think it-- I think saving _ you_, he… he could feel proud of that. And I think out of all of us, you were… I think if you asked him, gun to your head, you can only save one of your friends, who do you pick… it would be you.”

Richie can’t answer. A part of him wants to say that’s wrong, that it would always be Bill first, but how many nights did Bill slip through Eddie’s bedroom window and hold him through the nightmares? How many times did Eddie crawl into Bill’s personal space, share a chair, a bed, the hammock? Bill was everyone’s big brother, everyone’s hero, just a little bit, their fearless leader, but Eddie would sit next to _ him _ at the movies, grab his arm if it was scary, at least as often as he sat by Bill. Maybe more.

Even if Eddie never felt the way Richie still does, he’d cared, and they had been equals-- Richie protected Eddie as best he could, from bullies, from It, from the slings and arrows of childhood, but Eddie had always taken care of him, too. Patched him up, fixed his glasses, listened to his fears in the dark-- the ones he could talk about, at least. You never felt like you were truly on Big Bill’s level as a kid, but they could be on each other’s level.

“I’ll see you soon, Richie.” Mike says softly, and Richie realizes that even with a hand clamped over his mouth, he’s been sobbing down the line. “Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah.” He manages. “I will, I will.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow night.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Love you, buddy.”

He can’t answer that, either, can only sob, and for a long moment, he knows Mike is hanging on the line, that he won’t leave him so he ends the call, gives himself some time to breathe, and goes back to Stan. 

Patty has a whole other list of people to call, she leaves Richie with Stan after a lengthy embrace. He watches Stan kiss her neck and squeeze her with a little more strength, mindful of all his various tubes, and then the two of the are alone and Stan gives him a serious look.

“I saw things.” He says. “In the deadlights, when we were kids. Things. I didn’t remember… I thought I had to-- Because I saw it happen. Only I didn’t remember it all, or maybe I’d have… I don’t know. I woke up remembering everything. The different ways we’d all die if we didn’t come back. I saw something else, Rich. Not-- not in the deadlights. I saw something… _ else_.”

“Psychic shit?”

“I don’t believe in psychic shit.”

“You didn’t believe in killer clowns from outer space, either.”

“Yeah. Psychic shit.”

“Lay it on me, Staniel.”

“Like… a turtle. And a lighthouse. The turtle… wants _ you _ to go to the lighthouse.”

“Not to pooh-pooh your psychic shit, but that’s both vague and batshit crazy.”

“Little Tall Island. There’s only one lighthouse, as far as I know. And you’ve got to be the one to go there, if you want to get back what you lost.”

Richie’s breath catches. There’s only one thing he’s lost that he gives a damn about.

“Little Tall Island. Lighthouse. If anyone asks, a turtle sent me.” He nods.

“Richie, I don’t _ know _ what it means.”

“Either I do, or it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Stan returns his earlier nod, with a not-quite-smile that looks so familiar even on an adult face that Richie thinks he could have picked him from a crowd.

He wants to go, now, but he’d promised to be here and so here he stays. While Patty makes her calls, he catches Stan up on the details of how they’d beaten It for good.

“Guess who got hot, by the way.” He says, just as Patty is walking back in.

“Mike.” Stan says, with zero hesitation.

“No-- well, yes, actually, like… _ yes_. But I mean guess who got _ surprisingly _ hot.”

“Who?”

“Ben. He’s… incredibly, like… he’s super tall and he’s jacked. Which is not even my type! But on Ben it really works.”

“Good for him.”

“Good for _ Bev_. I mean can you _ imagine_\-- I guess you don’t actually spend any of your time imagining how good guys are in bed, but like… guys who weren’t hot when they were younger who wind up jacked are undoubtedly the best because they put the work in, because they remember being not hot.”

“I understand the principle, Rich.” Stan rolls his eyes, then turns to Patty, reaching for her. “Did you get through to everyone?”

“I left a few messages.” She slips her hand into his, bringing it up to her lips. “The Harrisons have promised to leave some meals with us when you get home. Michael A. is coming over tomorrow, and my parents want us to visit when you feel up to it. Not everyone knows-- I thought it would be better if you were in control of who knew what when, for the most part, but… well. My sister’s going to visit as soon as she can get away from work, I told her to just come on her own this time, and to bring the kids when you’ve got your strength back, I just--”

“You made the right call.” He tugs their joined hands back, returning the kiss. “You’ve made all the right calls. I-- I’m sorry.”

“Hush, don’t-- don’t worry about that right now.”

“I panicked, and… it’s not going to happen again, it-- A moment of madness, just… I promise, all right?”

“All right.” She bends over him, kissing the top of his head, lingering to let him tilt back for a proper kiss. “I’ll hold you to that promise, mister.”

Stan smiles up at her, soft. Richie feels a sick, hot stab of guilt at the jealousy he feels. 

Little Tall Island… what is he really going to find in that lighthouse? Something he lost… but it can’t really give him Eddie back. Peace of mind, maybe. He itches to go, but not before the other Losers arrive. 

He hugs Stan and Patty both when visiting hours wrap, and when he arrives the next day, he meets a handful of their friends. People from work, people from their synagogue, Stan’s parents-- they remember Richie a little, time and the natural haziness of memory has rendered most of the Losers fairly indistinct in their minds, but Richie thinks that might be for the best. Richie hangs out in the hall with whoever isn’t in to see Stan at any given moment, ducks in just long enough to say hey, not wanting to take time from everyone who hadn’t gotten to be there. 

When Mike arrives, it’s too late to see Stan, but he gets to meet Patty in person, and then he and Richie have dinner-- have one celebratory drink before they head back to the hotel, where he’s arranged for Mike to get the room by his. 

When he does get in to see Stan, Mike has a photo album full of copies of old pictures of them as kids, as well as the pictures he’d managed to get with the Losers as they are now, before they’d left Derry. Ben and Bev with bright grins and their arms around each other. There’s one good picture of Richie, he doesn’t remember Mike taking one, must have been a phone picture. Anything after Neibolt, Richie would have looked morose-- hell, at more than one point he’d actively been wishing for death, and lacking the drive to do anything about it, and any pictures of him at those points would be the opposite of a good gift for Stan now, but… but there, in the restaurant, laughing with Eddie, their hands locked together, their eyes locked together… 

Had Eddie really looked at him like that? It feels so weird to see it from another angle like this, to see things he hadn’t when it was happening. 

“That’s Eddie? And-- that’s Ben?” Stan looks up from the photos to give Richie a look that clearly communicates _ you weren’t kidding_. 

“I know!” Richie laughs. “And Bill--”

“Looks like he does on the back of his books.” Stan smiles. “Think he’d be embarrassed if I asked him to sign one?”

“I think he’d be _ overjoyed_, most of us roasted him for his endings.”

“It’s not his strong point.” Stan agrees, but he looks so fond… “He’s not that bad. And I liked his last one… mostly.”

“I’ll bring one over and you can ask him.” Patty says. “I can’t believe you know all these people… I mean-- you knew all these people who went and got famous.”

“It’s weird.” Mike chuckles. “Anyway, Stan, you missed the reunion, so the photo album’s yours. We didn’t get as many pictures as we should have, over the weekend, but… We’ll just have to keep getting together and taking more.”

Patty doesn’t have the chance to run home for a book, as it happens-- Richie ducks out to wave someone else in, only to see Bill arriving, and so he grabs him, ushering him in instead. Watching as Bill rushes to Stan, touches his face and stammers out a greeting as heavy on feeling as it is on extra syllables, hugs him hard and musses his hair and kisses the top of his head. He shakes Patty’s hand, and then he gets in a hug with Mike as well, relaxing a little just having him present. Richie feels like he should feel… more, having them all together and with Ben and Bev on the way. Stan was missing that first time around and Stan is his very oldest friend, and he should feel more, seeing Stan and Bill together, except there’s an Eddie Kaspbrak-sized hole, which as it turns out is a pretty big hole, and it’s not something that the others can fix, not even with Stan here. And it’s not that it doesn’t feel good to be with them, as much as anything can feel good, it’s just that he thinks he should feel _ more_. The joy fades too quickly sometimes and leaves him feeling hollowed out again. 

When Ben and Bev arrive the next morning, before visiting hours are open to anyone other than family, Patty comes out to meet them while Stan visits with his parents. Ben is bearing a birdhouse that’s a stunning recreation of Stan’s childhood home, considering he had to have made it entirely between the time he left Derry and the time the call came that Stan had woken up, which was a couple of days, and Bev gives something to Patty, the two of them talk softly while the other Losers all stand by, and it’s funny how they reconnect as if it’s been weeks rather than days since they’ve seen each other last, but they do, Richie’s never in his _ life _ been touched as much as he has been since they all came back together.

“How are you holding up?” Ben asks him, voice soft.

“All right. I, uh… I have to head out. Not today, I guess, but-- tomorrow, maybe. A couple good days with everyone here, for Stan, and then… there’s a thing I gotta take care of, it’s… I’ll know when I get there, I guess. How I am.” He sighs and lets himself be pulled in, lets himself relax against Ben’s shoulder. It’s comforting-- lucky Bev, indeed, and not just because of the sexy stuff, it’s very reassuring just getting to go boneless and be held up by someone who doesn’t expect him to be okay.

“We’ll all have to get together under happier circumstances.” Ben rubs his back. 

“I guess we will, yeah. Everything’s… shit, everything’s weird.”

“Been hanging around a hospital too long?”

“No. It’s just… weird. Life’s fucking weird. Our lives are, anyway. Yeah, of course we’ll get together. Like… we should do new year’s together. We should make that our thing. Get together someplace warm and say goodbye to one hell of a shitty year and… and the next one’s gotta be better. And every year after is just gonna take us farther from-- oh god…”

And then he’s crying in Ben’s arms, and then he’s crying sandwiched between Ben and Mike, and then Bill is setting down the coffee he’d gone for and Bev is stepping over and the four of them are holding him again like they had in the quarry, and he lets them.

When they do get in to see Stan, Ben volunteers Richie to host new year’s, pointing out it had been his idea, and he wonders how much of that is to make him accountable to them all one just one thing, so that he doesn’t pull a Stan, because Richie doesn’t have anyone to save his ass should he regret it a moment too late.

He wants to say Ben doesn’t have to worry about him, none of them do, he’s not going to _ do _ anything. Not since they stopped him from running back into the house on Neibolt. _ Guns aren’t lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful, might as well live_, wasn’t that how it went? Except if he said ‘hey guys, it’s cool, I’m not going to off myself, I just low-key wanna be dead’, that would _ not _ reassure anyone. And it’s not that he wants to die, no. That part sounds unpleasant and he’d like to avoid it. Which he thinks is reassuring, personally, but which he suspects will just sound crazy to anyone else. Even Stan isn’t suicidal in a general sense, he’d panicked in the face of a return to Derry and a flood of disturbing memories, but he hasn’t lived with a long term desire to not be alive, Richie doesn’t think. Richie’s never wanted to do anything about it, but he’s had a few lows where, if a bus hit him, he’d have rather died on impact than gone through recovering just to be stuck in his own life, and it’s a thing he’s comfortable with. Because he knows he’s not a suicide risk, he’s just miserable and he hates himself.

Well, he hates himself less now, but he’s a hell of a lot more miserable. 

He promises to take them all to see the best fireworks the LA area has to offer, and tries to focus on the fact that all of the living Losers are together. His temporary place in Chicago had been crappy and drafty and miserable, and he’d been depressed there even before the phone call, but his house in LA? His house in LA is nice. It’s not one of those huge sprawling places, but it’s huge for one man, and sometimes it’s a little lonely, yes, sometimes it’s a little much, but he actually sees the sun when he’s there, and it’s home. And most importantly, if he put an air mattress in the office he doesn’t do much in, he could put Ben and Bev there, and Stan and Patty in the guest room, and Mike in the living room and Bill… also in the living room, if he’s flying solo? He’ll work it out, he can fit everyone in the house. Hell, this might actually get him to buy a dining room table. 

It’s mostly nice, visiting with everyone there, but it makes the Eddie-sized hole sharper, too, and something is buzzing under his skin and telling him it’s time to get a move on, so after a couple of days, he points out how long he’s been there and hugs everyone goodbye, and heads off on his quest-- for lack of a better word.

The trip out to Little Tall Island starts a lot like the trip out to Derry had, and it makes his skin crawl just a little, but then he takes a different turn and he breathes a little easier. He stops breathing so easy when he catches the ferry out to the island and it’s just him and not very much cargo.

“Don’t get a lot of folks going out this way of late.” The ferry captain says, with the sort of relaxed nosiness and loose suspicion that feels horribly homey. 

“Small town, huh?”

“Ayuh. Could call it that. Take it this is business.” He says, and Richie hears the implication loud enough-- if it was personal, he’d know all about why no one ever visits Little Tall Island.

“Just going out to look at the lighthouse.”

“Ah, well.” He nods, and doesn’t say ‘one of _ those_’, but Richie hears that, too. People with their checklists of lighthouses, going up and down the coast and out to every little island, he got it, he got it, those people were annoying. But it’s an explanation that doesn’t invite further prodding. “You miss the ferry back out while you’re taking your lighthouse pictures and I won’t wait up for you, but you shouldn’t have any trouble finding an empty room and the mail comes out most days.”

He spots the lighthouse early on in their approach, and he tosses off a quick thanks to the captain before rushing towards it the second they’re docked. 

It’s a clear morning, no need for the lighthouse to be doing much lighting, and when he reaches it, the keeper’s relaxing outside with a cigarette. If you asked Richie to picture a lighthouse keeper, he thinks this is about who he’d picture. A deeply-creased face, iron grey hair, rimless glasses. Something about his posture and the set of his face that says this is his natural habitat.

“Oh, yuh, you’ll be here for…” He nods and jerks a thumb up at the thing. “Just take the stairs up, and don’t stop goin’ till you get to the top.”

“Uh-- thanks.” Richie nods. The man gives him a smile, but it’s an odd little smile, secretive and catlike. 

Inside, it’s… a lighthouse. Not that Richie is a lighthouse guy by any means, he thinks he went inside one once before on a half-remembered school trip or something, but there aren’t any surprises either way, as he takes in the largely-empty column that makes up the body of the lighthouse. He climbs the spiraling staircase up to the top, opens the door, and oh.

So that’s where the surprise is, then.

There are windows, as expected. There are also two other doors, they’d opened when he’d opened his, and there can’t be doors there, equally spaced between the big, wide windows, because there’s only one staircase. There’s nowhere for those doors to go but _ out_.

The other two men look between him and each other, coming to the same conclusion. They both look like they’re about his age, and they both look like they’ve had about as much sleep lately. Both definitely taking the whole eighties nostalgia trend too far, in Richie’s opinion. One is wearing glasses, has a couple day’s worth of stubble, unruly hair and unfortunate acid-wash jeans, a slightly-faded Rolling Stones tee. The other has equally-unruly sandy hair, an even more unfortunate mustache, a pale blue blazer with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow, worn over a tee shirt with the neck all stretched out and a couple of small holes. Not that Richie thinks he can look much better, he’s wearing a too-small sweater over a too-big camp shirt in an eye-searing print, and he doesn’t know if the holes in the knees of his jeans are stylish or not, though at least that’s one thing he’s wearing that fits.

The other thing they all notice is that the lighthouse doesn’t have a light.

“Oh, sure.” Mustache nods. “They put it away during the day. Real energy-saver.”

“Up in the attic.” Glasses points up, to where a cord dangles down for a trapdoor. 

“Don’t stop going ‘til you get to the top…” Richie sighs. 

They’re all three of them tall, and Richie thinks he’s got the longest reach by just a little bit, but the end of the cord is just past-- his fingertips brush it when he tries hopping for it, and then his knees feel fully and acutely forty. Neither of the others really commit to jumping, but there’s a moment of silent communication before they work together, Glasses and Mustache linking arms to boost him up where he can just grab for it. Richie pulls, and the trapdoor opens, the ladder sliding down. 

“After you.” He steps back, gesturing. There’s a light up in the attic or crawlspace or whatever is up there, a longer way up than he thinks it should be, and something that casts shadows-- and if he’s honest, Richie really just doesn’t want to go first. He’s done enough, been in enough creepy, weird places. He just doesn’t want to go first, that’s all. He’ll go, but couldn’t he go behind someone else?

“No, no, all yours.” Mustache shakes his head. “You got it open.”

“Group effort, man, go on.”

“Just, logistically speaking…” Glasses breaks in, sounding like a guy who’s never said ‘logistically speaking’ before in his life and is desperate to coast on the assumption that a guy wearing horn-rimmed glasses knows what he’s talking about. “I mean, in case there’s a weird obstacle, or-- some shit like that, or something at face-height, I think… the guy who doesn’t wear glasses should go first. These are my backups, they’re a little out-of-date, and I should probably be behind someone.”

“Yeah, these are also backups. Last time I went into a weird as shit building my real glasses got busted, so.” Richie holds his hands up.

“Really?” Mustache looks between them with a sigh, but he doesn’t argue the point, he just turns to the ladder, grabs a rung, and starts hauling himself up.

Richie follows, keeping his opinion about unflattering chinos to himself. It’s not like he elected to be not-first on the ladder for the purpose of checking out another guy’s ass, but it just feels like a shame that this is his first opportunity for real sustained ass-ogling since he started making himself at home with the whole gay thing and there’s nothing to compliment. Because Mustache is one hundred percent also gay, or bi, or _ something_, and Richie’s not interested in hooking up with the guy or anything, but he wants to learn to be comfortable with flirting. He doesn’t actually expect he’ll ever… He doesn’t know how to move on and he doesn’t like to think about moving on, but he wants to be able to flirt anyway, just socially. Just to be comfortable doing it.

There’s a very quiet whistle from behind him on the ladder, so he guesses Glasses is also something, which is… nice? He thinks it’s nice. He doesn’t think he has the world’s finest ass or anything, but out of the three of them he’s wearing the pants with the best fit, and hey, if there’s a compliment in that whistle, he’ll take it. He looks down, tossing off a wink, and Glasses laughs, pushes his glasses up his nosebridge and starts up the ladder after him. 

“Oh-- oh, holy _ shit_.” Mustache says, as he reaches the top of the ladder and hauls himself out. It sounds like awe more than fear, or at least if there’s fear, it’s not of some immediate danger. But nothing in his tone prepares Richie for the moment he gets to the top and accepts the hand that reaches down to help him out, and…

“Fuckin-- holy shit is _ right_.” He blinks, even cleans his glasses, but it doesn’t change anything. He’s in the barrens. The only difference is that instead of having emerged from the clubhouse, he’s emerged from a fucking lighthouse, and there are three deerpaths, clear and wide enough that none of the Losers would have needed Eddie to find their way if they’d had those, equally spaced.

They correspond, he realizes, to the doors. He makes a rapid circle, trying to walk off some of the nerves that take him now, but he doesn’t think he can.

“Oop-- here you go, buddy, come on up, I gotcha--” Mustache is saying, is hauling Glasses up out of the hatch, so that he can see what they’re seeing.

“What the shit is _ this_?” He asks, with just a hint of a whine. He and Mustache grip each other’s arms a long moment, and Richie gravitates back to them.

“I think we’re supposed to…” He jerks a thumb towards his own path, and motions each of them towards the others. 

“Every man takes his own door?” Glasses swallows.

“I guess that makes as much sense as _ anything fucking else_!” Mustache takes a step back, spreading his arms and looking to the sky, but nothing answers him. There are no birds in the trees to take off at his outburst, no cosmic entity looking down on them-- or at least not one inclined to answer. 

“You guys gonna be okay?” Richie asks. 

“Yeah.” Mustache says. Something pained crosses his face and his shoulders fall, before he reaches up to pinch his nosebridge. “Yeah, I’ll-- thanks, but I think I know where I’m going. What about you?”

Richie knows exactly where he’s going. Unless the deerpath takes a twist he doesn’t anticipate, he’s heading towards the kissing bridge. He guesses he knows where he’s going better than the others, but at least they’ve got clear paths to lead them where they need to go.

“Either I’ll be great or I’ll die.” Glasses shrugs. 

“Amen to that.” Richie nods. “Hey, uh… this might be a weird question, but… this is a weird fucking day, so I’m just going to ask it. Did a turtle send you? And did it have-- I mean, feel free to not answer this if it’s fucking personal, but did it have anything to do with bringing someone back from the dead, because I’m really struggling here, like… my friend had some kind of weird psychic coma vision, so now I’m here, but it’s…”

He trails off. Glasses had gone white as a sheet at ‘turtle’, and Mustache looked downright sick at ‘back from the dead’.

“Is that a yes?” He asks.

“If I find out, pal, I’ll let you know.” Mustache claps him on the shoulder. “Provided I catch you again. Happy trails, kemosabe.”

He turns to pat Glasses’ side next, wishes him luck, and then Glasses tells them both to stick to the trail and stay safe, and Richie just echoes that, before he starts along his deerpath.


	2. Find Me and Follow Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three paths lead away from the hatch.
> 
> In which Richie Tozier sets out to look for Eddie Kaspbrak, and at the same time, Richie Tozier sets out to look for Eddie Kaspbrak, and at the same time...

Richie Tozier takes the deerpath that leads to the kissing bridge, is not surprised when that is where it takes him. There’s a figure crouching there, child-sized, and for a moment, at a distance, he thinks he must be looking at his own child self. It would not be the weirdest thing to happen since coming to Little Tall Island. 

Stan had told him to come here, that he would find what he had lost, and so here he is, keeping himself open to whatever it is he’s going to find, and why wouldn’t it be that? Only when he gets closer he can tell it isn’t him-- he doesn’t have to get very close at all to realize what he is looking at. 

_ Eddie_. Child-Eddie, in his little shorts and too-neat polo shirt and the tube socks that come more than halfway up to knobby, rosy knees. The boy he had loved, when he was a boy. He comes to stop, not quite stepping onto the bridge, unwilling to disturb this vision of the past. 

_ Eddie_, fuck. He looks so _ young_, thirteen looks so _ young _ now. At this distance he can see the glimpse of a cast, which means it must be that summer. 

For some reason, Richie had thought that if he didn’t touch the bridge itself, Eddie would exist in another world, and he wouldn’t notice him, though he realizes he had no real reason to assume that the magic would work that way. Eddie’s attention snaps up to him, he sees the guarded look on his face and then sees it slowly melt away into slight caution, and then, a smile.

Eddie rises to stand, to shove the one hand he can down into his pocket as he rocks on the balls of his feet. 

“Heya, Richie.” He greets, his voice soft. The kind of softness that could only exist between them when there was no one else around, a softness he remembers well now. So different from how they’d bicker in front of the others… 

How odd, to see him like this, now, to remember the things he had felt but to feel… different. To see Eddie differently. To remember all the things that drove him crazy and made his stomach go all fluttery once but to look at him and see him as so small and so young, so… _ unfinished_, as a person, not yet grown. He’d grown up, and the man he’d grown into, Richie had had all the same feelings for, has all the same feelings for, the same and different. He looks like such a baby now. There’s a vague desire to protect him from a future Richie’s already lived through, and a vague desire to be somewhere else, not dealing with this, a weird roiling unease.

“You recognize me?”

“Of course I do. I’d recognize you anywhere.” He smiles. “But you’re not looking for-- for this me.”

“No, I guess not. But-- for you. A different you. Like, a grown-up you. Have you… seen a grown-up you?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I wouldn’t know what a grown-up me is like. Do I get tall?”

“No.” Richie laughs. “You don’t. But… it’s okay. You’re going to be-- cool, okay? Like, despite _ all _ your best efforts, you’re going to be pretty cool.”

“Dick.” Eddie rolls his eyes. “Hey-- um… if you’re looking for me-- grown-up me-- I think… maybe you should see something.”

He takes a step back towards the other side, and so Richie steps onto the bridge to follow. The moment he does, there’s a loud crack, the whole thing falls away. 

Eddie falls with it. 

Richie is sure the water under the kissing bridge was never like this, that there was never so much so fast, and he scrambles down, grabs one of the boards from the inexplicable collapse. Eddie is out there, there had been a little cry, a splash, and he’s a ways downstream and clinging onto a rock with his one good arm, and he’s just a little kid and even if he’s not exactly real, Richie can’t stand by and let him fucking _ drown_, he wades in as far as he dares with the current pushing at his legs, and reaches out with the broken board to try and give Eddie something to grab onto, but the moment the board touches the rushing water, it’s ripped from his hand and carried downstream.

“No!” Eddie howls, and then splutters as he takes in a mouthful of water-- filthy, gross water, he must hate that, not as bad as the fucking… greywater, but not… 

But he’s small and scared and Richie is the adult here and he should _ do _ something, shouldn’t he?

It was never so wide, not here… the kissing bridge always spanned such a quiet little stretch, more burbling than rushing, and narrow. Why is it so wide now? He moves upstream first, before he tries to get across, hoping the current won’t take him past Eddie, hoping he can fight it, hoping he can just push them both to shore and then Eddie can tell him what it was he thought he should see, whatever clue he might have had to finding his adult self, and… and then he can go off and just be a kid, just be safe and be a kid for… forever, Richie guesses, in the weird little world at the top of the lighthouse. Maybe there are other child Losers here. He likes the thought that there’s some version of himself here, if Eddie is here, some version of all of them crystallized together in time, frozen together, the way they ought to be…

Was it ever this deep, by the bridge? Maybe when it rained and the river would swell, it would be deeper and a little faster. But he couldn’t remember it ever being like this. It feels like the next thing he knows he’s lying on the bank, well downstream from where he’d started, no sign of child-Eddie. He’s soaked from head to toe and coughing up water, and he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go from here.

And at the same time

Richie Tozier takes the deerpath that leads back towards his childhood home. 

That isn’t where he goes.

Eddie’s house still stands, and in this alternate version of Derry, almost devoid of life, that’s where he takes himself. He walks around to the side where Eddie’s bedroom window is, heart leaping at the warm glow of a lamp inside. He walks up to it as if in a trance, tosses a pebble he doesn’t remember picking up at the window.

The Eddie inside is a boy, which… maybe he should have known, or maybe he couldn’t have. He shouldn’t have expected Eddie at all, Eddie is dead, and he hasn’t lived in this house in so long, and this isn’t… Is this real?

At least there don’t seem to be any people around to get the wrong idea about a strange, broken-looking man standing outside a kid’s bedroom window. If he was someone else seeing him, he imagines he’d call the cops. He expects Eddie to, to run to his mother, if she exists, or to the phone to do just that, not to come and open the window, to lean his folded arms on the sill.

“Are you too old to climb through?” Eddie asks skeptically.

“Yes, I definitely am.” Richie says, though he thinks physically he could. 

“Oh.” He frowns, as if thinking this problem over. “What if I came out? Could you help me down?”

“I think that’s a bad idea, spaghetti man.”

“Do you still call me that?” Eddie makes a face. “Jeez, Rich, don’t you ever grow up?”

“I never do.” He smiles, and leans against the side of the house, with one outstretched arm. He should have been a child here, with no memory of what would come. They could have been carefree and happy, without… No. No, to have that, he would have to give up the new memories he has, of seeing Eddie again, of how easily they had fallen into each other’s space, into the same old same old, the teasing back and forth and the touches Eddie had barely protested. The beautiful soft halo of his hair, the way it had felt beneath his fingertips, his laugh, the beauty of his adult self. “Take my advice, Eddie, my lad, and don’t you grow up. It’s not worth it.”

Eddie scoffs, but he smiles as well. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Richie.”

“Thanks, so do I. I guess… this isn’t where I find it.”

“Guess not.” The smile dims. 

“Any idea where this quest takes me next?” Richie asks, but he’s not surprised when Eddie shakes his head. He waves, and tears himself away. Maybe he was meant to head to his own childhood home. Maybe.

After Derry, after surrendering Eddie’s body, the body he’d carried out of that fucking house of horrors himself, he’d driven off. He’d found himself in Castle Rock, stopped there because he needed to eat something and sleep a spell, and he didn’t know where he was going, hadn’t bothered digging out a map to see if he was heading the right way or not. He hadn’t been able to think about any of that.

He was looking for a place to eat when he’d seen a stranger trip on a curb, had rushed over to pick him up off the ground and help him onto a nearby bench, pick up the dropped cane. Then the man had gripped his arm and told him about the lighthouse on Little Tall Island. He’d said ‘for Eddie’, and then he’d looked a little hazy and a little lost, and shaken the fog off, and introduced himself under the blandest fake name possible, but Richie hadn’t cared about that, had only wanted to know what he meant by ‘for Eddie’, and the man hadn’t even known that. 

It hadn’t mattered, of course. Those two little words were all it took, Richie would have gone anywhere. He’d taken the ferry out to Little Tall Island as soon as humanly possible, and the island had been as lively as any from what he’d seen of it, but the path up to the lighthouse had been quiet, even the birds had fallen quiet, there had been only the lighthouse keeper, wiry-armed, thin-lipped, with pale eyes and dark hair just greying at the temples and in wisps here and there, and something about him had been oddly comforting-- avuncular, Richie remembers thinking-- and something else about him had been terrifying, but the man in Castle Rock had said ‘for Eddie’ and what else was Richie going to do?

And at the same time

Richie Tozier takes the deerpath that leads towards Neibolt. With every step he takes, he feels like he knows the way more firmly, like he doesn’t need a path. He doesn’t know what it is he’s going to find, he doesn’t know if he wants to know. He doesn’t turn towards the house to see if it’s still standing, he refuses. 

He doesn’t think he has a choice.

That’s where Eddie is, after all, under that house. Isn’t he? But the house is standing, and Richie can’t make himself go in. 

He’s a damn coward, that’s why. He doesn’t have it in him to do this, not alone. Maybe if Bill was with him, or any of the others, he could go down there, he could face it, but this…

He’d drifted out of Derry, after spending a couple of days there, days he hadn’t thought he’d take, but the idea of leaving, when Eddie… He’d drifted out of Derry and through towns whose names he didn’t bother to take note of, because the idea of going home to a big empty house knowing Eddie was dead beneath the one on Neibolt had hurt. He had driven, waiting for the fog to settle over his brain, but it hadn’t-- every time he’d closed his eyes he’d seen Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. How softly he had smiled just before the light left his eyes, how it had been for him, how there had been a look of desperation, but it wasn’t like… it wasn’t desperation because he knew he was dying and didn’t want to, or not only that, it was something he had wanted Richie to understand, and the idea that it might have been… that it might have been the same thing Richie wanted…

He walks away from the house, panic filling him up. He feels like he’s about to be sick, feels lightheaded and sweaty and nauseated, and so he walks away from the house even though it’s the last place-- because it’s the last place-- he saw Eddie. 

Dead.

He doesn’t pay any attention to where he’s walking. There are no cars going down Neibolt, no people. 

Why bring him back here?

He’d stayed in Derry because he hadn’t been able to leave the place where Eddie died, afraid he could forget him again and nothing would ever remind him. He’d left Derry at last because he couldn’t bear to be in the same town as the collapsed house, as Eddie dead and--

He’d only just left Derry when the dream hit him, and he woke up feeling like he’d met God. Maybe he had. The turtle, that fucking turtle, and the feeling of something expanding in his brain, and he’d shot up in his bed like he’d never done before, not even waking from the worst nightmares, he’d been in a cold sweat and he hadn’t remembered, exactly, he’d just known.

He’d just known to go to Little Tall Island, to the lighthouse, where the man had let him in-- he’d been good-natured, if jittery, not overly-talkative, sniffled a little between drags on his cigarette and unlocked the door and flashed a smile with too many teeth, but not an un-genuine one somehow. Had been maybe Richie’s own age, rather than the sort of weathered septuagenarian he’d have imagined, with thick dark brown hair in the kind of unflattering cut he supposes you could expect from a man with a solitary profession, and equally unflattering glasses. 

But he hadn’t understood why he was doing what he was doing, that was the thing. He couldn’t remember enough of the dream, and the lighthouse keeper didn’t warn him about this.

When he stops running, his lungs burning and his knees protesting and his eyes stinging, he’s not quite sure where he is for a moment. He hadn’t realized he’d broken into a run at all until he couldn’t run any more. A field, he’s in a field, and there… the train tracks, overgrown with tall grass. A boy walking along one rail.

_ Oh_.

Even from here, even with his back turned, even with just about thirty years gone, he knows him in an instant. 

For a moment, Richie thinks he might be sick.

Instead what happens is, he turns the other way, and he runs again.

He isn’t running for long, he mostly power-walks his way through the twists and turns of Derry. Winds up at the Aladdin, in the dark of the matinee, House of Terror playing, the house bathed in flickering light. The sound is muted, though, faraway, and every seat is empty when he slides into one, but then there’s a sound at his elbow, and he turns and it’s Eddie all over again.

Eddie a little older, but not much. Hell, he can’t even be fourteen, he… 

This was his last day in Derry. Sitting in the dark failing to find the courage to tell a boy that he loved him, so much more than anyone else. And House of Terror had been the wrong choice, he’d thought nothing could scare him anymore, when they’d gone in, and…

“You won’t forget me, will you, Richie?” Eddie whispers, as he’d whispered then, and he hasn’t, not this time, but he’d left him, and that’s just as bad.

And at the same time

He goes by his house, but it’s empty and dark. He goes by the Paramount, where Eddie leans against the wall. Not the Eddie he’d left leaning out the window of his childhood bedroom, but also not the Eddie he’d been forced to leave in the real world, grown up and dead. An in-between Eddie, bone structure just starting to emerge from the softness of youth, not much taller in the throes of puberty than he had been before it. 

His hair was still cut short, but he had stopped slicking it down, a small rebellion. Richie remembers the way he had begun to cast longing, sighing glances at musicians and matinee idols who had begun to embrace a little more variety than the choice between a short and practically lacquered-down side part or a crew cut. The mop top wouldn’t be the hot look for a while yet, back then, but it hadn’t taken much to look like freedom to Eddie.

Richie had hidden his own longing glances, back then-- they had had little to do with the same kind of freedom Eddie had been seeking. As often as not, Eddie was the recipient, try as a young Richie might not to… not to feel that way, not to be caught feeling that way. 

This Eddie bites his lip and just barely shakes his head, when he catches Richie’s eye. Not right, not yet, not this him, keep on looking. It’s there in his eyes how much he’d like it to be this him, and how he knows it can’t be. Richie hopes that somewhere in this strange, empty Derry, there’s also a teenage Richie. Someone, at least, to keep Eddie from spending forever alone. But what could Richie do for this Eddie? He can’t take him down the hatch in the barrens and out of the lighthouse, and into real life. He can’t adopt his childhood crush, it’s weird, and he’s not a responsible father figure at his best. And it’s _ weird_. But he feels bad leaving him here, having not seen any evidence of himself, of the young Losers.

He pauses there a moment, searches Eddie’s face for any clue to where he’s supposed to _ find _ the right one, but there’s nothing. Eddie would tell him if he could. He sends a silent promise, in the hopes that when he finds the Eddie he needs to find, it will mean something for all the Eddies who have come before. That he’ll be at peace in every other incarnation, or that he’ll just be all himself, that once he gets to the end of the line it’ll all just be one finished Eddie, ready for Richie to save him. Somehow.

And he will.

And at the same time

The Capitol Theater is open, but empty. Richie’s not sure why he’s dragged himself here, except that he might as well hit all the greatest hits on the Richie Tozier Trauma Tour, though after what happened at the bridge, he doesn’t really want to know.

But there are no crowds, no Bowers, just Richie dripping on the carpet.

And Eddie.

Eddie, fifteen and beautiful-- though to adult Richie, fifteen year old Eddie barely looks any different from thirteen year old Eddie. He recognizes what his own fifteen year old self had found beautiful, even if fifteen looks like a fetus from forty. He remembers all the things he had liked and the things he had felt. He remembers the first blush of desire.

He feels a sharp pang, a need to see Eddie again, real adult Eddie. The Eddie he finds beautiful _ now_, that he’d waited his whole life to find beautiful again, that he…

Not that that Eddie would be any more his, but… even knowing it would be hopeless, he could confess his feelings to that Eddie. Or even just talk to him. He doesn’t know anymore how to talk to a kid, even under normal circumstances. 

This Eddie leans against the photo booth, something reproachful in his wide, dark eyes. Richie feels like maybe he should apologize for failing to save him when the bridge collapsed. 

“You forgot me.” Eddie says. His voice quivers. 

“Eddie… Yeah. We-- we all forgot, I-- I’m sorry.”

“We took pictures, so we wouldn’t forget.” He looks down at his feet. The strip of photos is there, as if they’d only just done it, but Richie isn’t sure he wants to come close enough to take them. “I should have given them to you then.”

“You were afraid I’d lose them.” He nods slowly, remembering. “In the move.”

“I thought if I mailed them to you, then you wouldn’t forget, the way-- the way Bev…”

“Forgot us. Why didn’t you?”

“I was going to.” Eddie looks back up at him, hurt flashing in his eyes, even though Richie hadn’t accused him of anything. “She threw away your address. She threw away the pictures.”

“She-- Your mom?”

Eddie gives him a withering ‘who else?’ look, before his face falls back into sorrow. “I tried to stop her, honest.”

“I know you did. I mean-- I believe… Why?”

“Richie. You know why.”

He takes the strip. It’s just the two of them, he remembers it. His arm around Eddie’s shoulders the whole time. They seem to take it in turns to look at the camera and at each other, identical looks of adoration. 

They never kissed, he thinks he’d remember kissing the love of his life, they’d never dated. He had never said a word about his feelings, not even when he was leaving forever and couldn’t even begin to hope he’d find Eddie again. But the love in the photographs is palpable. Had they really looked like this? Had Eddie?

“Wow, Eds.” He says, trying to ignore the way his own voice cracks. “Really shitty taste in men you had back then.”

“Asshole.” Eddie sniffs, smiling. “Give it back, if you’re going to be a dick about it.”

Richie holds the photo strip out. Eddie might as well keep it this time around. 

“Sure.” He says. “I-- Fuck, this is… weird. Fucked up weird.”

“Don’t stop looking for me?”

“I won’t.” He promises. “Eddie… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I forgot. I’m sorry I didn’t just take the pictures with me, or-- or take half. And I’m sorry I couldn’t-- I’m sorry I wasn’t better, when we were kids. I’m sorry for how things turn out, I-- I’m so sorry, for… like, all of it. Shit, I really wish grown up you was here right now.”

“Just… don’t stop looking.” Eddie holds the photo strip out. “Here. You can give this back to grown up me. Rich-- you have to give it to the _ right _ me. Okay? Promise?”

“Promise. There’s, uh, there’s a wrong you?”

Eddie nods solemnly. “The right me, or I won’t be able to-- or I can’t-- You have to find the right one.”

Richie looks down at the photos, wonders if Eddie could look at him like that again now, as adults. 

  
“I promise.” He says. All he has to do is find where a grown up Eddie would be, he can do that. There are only so many places in Derry to _ go_, and how much has he even changed?


	3. But We Loved With a Love That Was More Than Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting Eddie back.

Richie goes back to Niebolt, like he thinks he should have done in the first place. He marches himself to where he left Eddie’s body, even if he thinks he can never be ready for what he’ll find. 

The sickly smell of death is the same as it ever was, it’s soaked into the walls and the floorboards, but it isn’t… but as he approaches the place where he’d kissed Eddie goodbye, it isn’t any worse. He finds him there, in a pool of dark blood, but he finds him _ bleeding_. Alive, if not by much, if not for long. 

He’s kneeling in Eddie’s blood, pulling him up into his arms, his mind a complete blank except for Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, the unreal reality of him. 

“Eddie-- Eddie, I know, I do, it’s-- it’s okay, I’m here, I’ve got you, it’s okay now, you’re here--” He babbles. Eddie’s blood soaks into his tee shirt, from the place where Eddie’s arm isn’t, hot, and he doesn’t know how there can still be so much of it, or how Eddie can look so clear-eyed when it’s all on the outside of his body like this. He cards his fingers through his hair. It had been neat at the start of the whole thing, he remembers, and even before he gets one hand in it, it’s far from it now… it feels saturated with sweat, but Richie couldn’t care less about that. If he can handle the blood, he can handle the sweat. The tears, he thinks, might be all him.

“Rich…” Eddie’s breath rattles. 

“I’m not going to leave you down here again.” He promises. “It’s okay. I-- I can save you this time.”

“No. You can’t.”

“I can, it’s why I’m here, I know--”

“Not… this me.” He reaches up weakly, his one hand just brushing Richie’s cheek before falling to his chest. “I’d never… make it out of the lighthouse… I... _ belong _ here.”

“Don’t say that, you can’t _ say _ that, Eddie, I-- I can’t lose you again, I--”

“You won’t. I… I understand now, and I’m not afraid. But I… this me… I wouldn’t make it down the stairs. You know that.”

“Eddie…”

“We’re ready now.” He sucks in another rattling breath, wet. He coughs once, blood bubbling at the corner of a gentle smile. “We’re done running. But it’s not this me, Rich…”

Someone sobs. Him, he guesses. It doesn’t feel like him, but then, nothing does. He feels detached from his body.

“Where? Where do I find you?”

“Dunno.” He reaches for Richie’s cheek again, another weak pass, his arm too weak to lift for long. “Look… look for the me who’s strong enough to make it. Say goodbye to me now. It-- it won’t be forever.”

“You are strong enough.” Richie whispers, pulling Eddie in closer, holding tight to him. “Please don’t make me lose you again, Eddie, please don’t leave me again, not when-- not when--”

Held like this, Eddie’s close enough to tilt his head just so, his lips brushing against Richie’s chin. It’s not quite a kiss. It’s not not a kiss. 

“Then… put-- put me down… and go.”

Richie understands. One of them is going to be leaving soon. If he doesn’t walk out the door while he has the chance, Eddie will die in his arms. That’s how it is. But he can’t. Unbearable as it is to watch him die a second death, walking out on him is something he could never do. 

“Not a chance.” He murmurs, kissing Eddie’s forehead. “Baby, I’m yours.”

Eddie’s breathing is ragged and wet, and Richie cradles him to his chest until it stops and stays stopped.

And at the same time

Richie heads for the Derry Inn, because he really doesn’t know where else _ to _ head. He wonders if there’s some phantom version of his stuff there, or if there’s another Bowers there-- doesn’t bear thinking about, does not bear thinking about. There won’t be anything there, he tells himself, but where else is there? A long list of places he doesn’t want to go.

The place had been so dead back in reality that he doesn’t think there’s much difference between the real world and the lighthouse world. He goes straight to the bar to help himself, only to find Eddie lying in front of the fireplace. 

Adult Eddie, the Eddie he’d shared that exact spot with, the two of them relaxed in spite of everything, because they’d been… because they’d been together, within such easy distance, because they had touched, because they could make each other smile… Just being near Eddie again could make him smile, even with everything else. And Eddie… shaking off his insecurities for a moment because Richie had a joke for him. 

He forgets the drink entirely, in favor of dropping down beside him, and only then does he realize something is wrong. 

“Eddie?” He pats his cheek, and Eddie blinks blearily up at him.

“Richie…”

“Hey, pal, what’s wrong?”

“Aw, nothin’.” Eddie huffs, his voice soft and thready. “Just… dying, that’s all.”

“No, no-- don’t say that. You’re going to be all right. We-- we’ll get you out of here.”

Eddie grabs for Richie’s hand, guiding it to rest over his torso. He reaches up to cup his cheek. His eyes are clouded over, his breathing weak and uneven, but he draws enough strength from somewhere, to keep his hand there at Richie’s cheek.

“I won’t make it. I’m… I’m hurt real bad, Richie.”

“I’m not leaving without you. Alive, this time. I can’t… I came here for you. Everything’s been for you, I stayed in Derry for you, I went into that damn house for you, and I fought… and I stayed in Derry because when I thought I might forget you-- and then I left and I-- And I wound up here, and you-- Come on, spaghetti man, I-- I’ve never been good at the heavy stuff. Don’t make me do this again, you know how I--” His voice cracks.

“I know.” Eddie smiles. It’s weak, but it’s there. “One… one more time, Rich, I’m sorry. You-- you’re just not… not done looking yet. That’s all.”

Richie tries to swallow past the lump in his throat, his hand moving from the spot where Eddie had placed it to gently cup the back of his head, buried in the soft wheat gold fluff of his hair. His other hand covers Eddie’s at his cheek, allowing him to relax his arm. 

“You--” He starts, and stops. There’s something he needs to say, that he can’t say like this. There’s a lot of things he needs to say, that he’s never been able to. “Eddie, I-- Dammit…”

“I know.”

“Where does it hurt the most?” He asks, though he’s afraid there’s nothing he can do for it, whatever the answer. 

“Doesn’t. Think I’m… past that.”

“Oh. Um… good? I don’t know. Is it good?”

“Dunno.” Eddie chuckles, and even soft as it is, it makes him cough. “What… what would you do if I wasn’t?”

“Try and distract you, I guess. We… we didn’t get much _ time_, the first time around.”

“You could… still distract me. What’ve you got?”

“Close-up magic.” He deadpans, and Eddie laugh-coughs again. “Bad jokes, a few crummy Voices and maybe one or two good ones. I’ll even serenade you, if you ask nicely.”

Eddie’s head is limp and heavy in Richie’s hand, and his arm is slack, a dead weight, but his eyes still sparkle, half-hazy but clinging to life, to good humor. To whatever trust he has in the fact that there’s a version of him that Richie can still save, but what other Eddie is there? He hasn’t seen any version of him from before he’d been killed, except his child self, and that’s not really what he signed up for, not something he thinks he can sign up for. What has he missed? Where is he supposed to go?

He expects Eddie to refuse, to laugh at him-- not impolitely-- and maybe to want his company, to want to hear him reminisce a while instead, or just to not be alone. How much longer will he live? It had been so sudden, before, he’d begun a thought and never finished it. He feels so heavy and yet so light, as if he’s becoming insubstantial, and it seems to take a supreme effort to turn his head, but he does, his lips brushing the heel of Richie’s hand, his eyelids fluttering, lashes pale against bloodless cheeks. He could be a ghost, if it wasn’t for the weight of his head in Richie’s palm, if it wasn’t for his uneven, struggling breaths.

“_Please_.” He says, and almost smiles-- a slight twitch of the lips that’s too much effort to hold.

“Anything. A little Buddy Holly? A little ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’?”

“Not the same… without the glasses…” One last bare chuckle-turned-cough. “Richie…”

And he falls silent, mouths ‘you know I--’, and Richie has to close his eyes, has to force away the memory of before. He moves Eddie’s hand down to rest over his own abdomen, freeing up his own to be able to adjust his hold on him, to move him up to lie against his chest. 

By ‘you left me last September’, Eddie is gone.

And at the same time

Richie goes to the pharmacy, because that’s where he’d expect to find Eddie. He’s not wrong, but he wishes he was.

He’s slumped against the counter, dark blood staining his shirt, pouring from the hole punched through him, pouring from his mouth. He’s holding Richie’s jacket and everything.

The panic chokes him. Too late. He’s too late. He was supposed to save him, he had this fucking second chance and he blew it. 

If he had saved Eddie on the bridge, little child-Eddie, would he have made it in time to save this one? If he had taken less time, if he had done something differently anywhere, could he have somehow saved Eddie now? He hits his knees when he reaches Eddie’s side, puts a hand to where Eddie’s clinging weakly to his balled-up jacket, not really applying any meaningful pressure. 

“No no no, no no no no no, it’s not supposed to be like this!” His hand lands on Eddie’s cheek, over his bandage, and his stomach sinks when Eddie doesn’t even flinch. “It’s not supposed to _ be _ like this, I came all the way out here! I was supposed to get you back!”

Eddie opens one eye, slumping into his palm, the stab wound to his face clearly the least of his problems at this point. 

“Richie?” His voice his weak, the blood’s trickled down his throat to stain the neck of his shirt, and Richie did _ not _ go out to some freaky lighthouse, climb up a ladder into the barrens, jump into the river, and walk all across town just for this. Stan didn’t tell him about a fucking turtle coma vision for this!

“Eddie, come on, buddy, you-- you gotta--”

“No… no, you.” His chest heaves, and makes an awful sound. “Have to… keep going. Until… until…”

“Until you reach the top.” Richie swallows. There’s something _ beyond _ this. The Eddie he’d seen in the theater had told him to save it for the right one, had known there was the chance of a false start, and that means there is a right one, one who isn’t dying.

“Rich…”

“Shh, shh… hey.” He drops his head down, his forehead to Eddie’s. “I’m here.”

“Rich… ‘m cold.”

“Really? Because I don’t have a jacket. I gave it away to some asshole.” He says, aiming for levity. Sobbing anyway. “And this sweater’s fucking soaked from when I jumped in the river.”

Eddie coughs out something that might be ‘that’s okay’, and also more blood. Richie can feel it against his own lips, and he bites back another harsh sob. 

When Eddie is gone, he lays him down, and he takes back his jacket to spread over him, and he gives him the goodbye he never got to, when he was being physically dragged from his body before. He strokes his brow and he kisses his cheek, and he makes sure he’s laid out as comfortably as he can be. Or could be, if... 

Where could he go from here? Where would he find the right Eddie? There’s nothing _ after _ this. The real Eddie never came up from beneath the house on Neibolt, and even if they could have gotten him out alive, and he knows, he knows they couldn’t, he was dead already, he couldn’t have made it to--

_ The hospital_. He’ll find Eddie at the hospital. 

He doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows. In this place, that’s exactly where he’ll be, because that’s where he’d have had to go to recover, isn’t it? So if there’s a version of Eddie who survived the fight with Pennywise, who got out of the house, that Eddie would be at the hospital.

When he reaches the hospital, he’s not alone-- Glasses and Mustache are approaching the hospital doors at the same pace. They both look the way Richie feels-- and in Glasses’ case, he’s covered in even more blood. 

“Some day you two have had.” Mustache looks the two of them up and down as they converge on the entrance. “You, uh… you’ve got a little something, right here.”

Richie snorts. Glasses mutters ‘asshole’ under his breath, but he’s the first to grab the door and he holds it for both of them. The three of them stride up to the front desk, the _ occupied _ front desk, occupied by the lighthouse keeper, in fact, which Richie doesn’t know what to do with.

“You fellas’ll have to shower first.” He nods to them.

“I don’t.” Mustache is quick to say. “I don’t know where these guys have been, but as the one non-walking biohazard, I’d really like to get where I’m going.”

“Well, hold your horses, then, because I’m only taking the three of you in once, so it’s going to be together. Showers are this way. And you’ll be able to find something to change into in the lockers, there.”

Richie can understand Mustache’s frustration-- he’d be out of his mind over any obstacle between him and Eddie, if he wasn’t one of the ones in need of a shower. It’s only the thought of what Eddie himself would say about the blood that has him complying without a fight. Even though it’s Eddie’s blood, he’d never let Richie hug him like this.

He expects to have to change into scrubs, and instead what he finds in the locker room before the showers is a replica of his own outfit. He and Glasses leave Mustache to pace outside and harangue the lighthouse keeper-cum-hospital receptionist.

-

Richie showers long enough to get the blood off-- the water runs pink down the drain for a long time and he has to scrub at his stained hands until they feel raw, but he gets it all off-- and then he barely towels off, before he’s pulling on his jeans and shirt, wrestling with his socks and shoes, also brand new replicas of what he’d been wearing, all of that a bloody heap in a big laundry hamper. 

He and his shower buddy both get their glasses back on, and exchange looks, neither of them seem to know what to say. Richie knows he doesn’t, at any rate. He’s about to see Eddie, he’s about to get Eddie back, and the other man is going to get someone back, too, otherwise he wouldn’t be here, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought up the possibility, bringing someone _ back_. 

Richie has heard stories, about people who have died, in weird ways or in weirder towns. How sometimes they come back. He always used to think it was campfire stuff, but now… hell, this makes the stories he’s heard sound pretty ordinary. Ghosts make a kind of sense, vampires make a kind of sense, zombies make a kind of sense. Telephones that let you talk to dead people and cemeteries that nothing stays buried in and girls who crawl out of graves and guys who wake up on autopsy tables might be the stuff of… of Bill’s imagination, as likely as anything else, but at least there’s a logic to it. The day Richie is having is so weird he doesn’t think Bill could sell it.

They step out into the waiting area together, where the third member of their intrepid little group is pacing, reading out loud to himself. He has a nice voice for radio, Richie thinks, and he would know. 

He looks up, sharp, when he hears their approaching footsteps, drops the book down to a side table, cutting short his teary rendition of Annabel Lee.

He also says nothing, the three of them simply fall into step together and return to the front desk, and then after the keeper up to a ward on the uppermost floor. Only it’s not a ward, not hospital beds and beeping monitors, but a room. Just… a room, not too unlike a nice sitting room. It’s _ cozy_.

Not that he takes in any of the details. He takes in Eddie sitting on one end of a slightly overstuffed sofa and he rushes to reach him. Eddie, his shirtsleeve folded and safety-pinned where his arm’s been bitten off. Eddie, his lower lip softly indented from nervous biting, and had he been waiting knowing Richie would come for him? Eddie, his pale grey eyes flecked with deeper greys, like the moon, they had always made Richie think of the moon. Eddie, _ alive_.

“Eddie!”

“Richie!” He pushes himself up, falling into Richie’s arms, and his own arm wraps around Richie’s neck. The stub on the other side tucks against him, holding on to the best of Eddie’s current ability, and Richie shifts his own hold, bringing one hand to wrap around his shoulder.

“How are you-- how-- how’s everything?” He asks. “You were dead, and I-- oh, _ Eds_, and I didn’t know what to do without you anymore…”

“I’m here.” Eddie whispers, that one arm pulling double-duty by squeezing as hard as it can. “Richie… it had to be you. It always… it always should have been you. I saw it-- when I was lying there, and you… I ran my whole life from being this way, afraid of being sick, getting sick, but looking up at you, I felt clean. And I-- and I knew I could never be afraid of loving you, not ever again. Although… I didn’t think I’d get this.”

“You’ve got this.” Richie smiles weakly, hand slipping up from Eddie’s shoulder to cup his cheek. “We’ve got this. We’ll make it work, people… people do make it work.”

Some people will know, when he moves Eddie into his house. Some people will know he’s a lover. But he is a lover… and it’s not the end of the world for a couple of people to know. It doesn’t have to spread, it doesn’t have to affect his career. 

“Do they?” Eddie sighs, and the light in his eyes is soft and teasing, and his focus flickers briefly, tellingly, to Richie’s mouth. 

Richie can take a hint. 

He’s kissed people before. Women. He’s thought about kissing men and he’s never accepted the risk in it-- that if he got in too deep, let himself care, there would be consequences. Social consequences, career consequences, he’d forget to be careful, or there’d be something there’s just no being careful about, and what if he couldn’t keep his private life private? And it’s not like being with women was a hardship, he’s always liked kissing, and he’s been with good kissers, and it’s been…

It’s been fine, except he could never make it work for long. There was always something missing, if not with the girl then with him. For all those years, for going on thirty years, he hadn’t known he’d been missing Eddie, that there was a love that never went away and he just couldn’t get past it. That there was a place in his heart that was occupied, and he didn’t know any better, he tried to fill it with people who wouldn’t fit. He could stick it out a while, but it always fell through. Even his longest-lasting relationship, they’d ignored the holes for a while before they had to face facts. He’d just believed he wasn’t cut out to be loved, to be what someone else needed-- he hadn’t known there was someone he could give that last part of himself to, someone he already had given it to.

Kissing Eddie is a long-awaited homecoming. Kissing Eddie is being a jigsaw puzzle piece snapping easily into place after failing to jam into others. Kissing Eddie is dropping into his favorite chair at the end of a long day with a drink in his hand, times a thousand. Kissing Eddie makes it feel like he can breathe again.

He didn’t even know he wasn’t breathing for so long, but now Eddie is kissing him right back and there’s oxygen in his lungs, in his brain. Like his brain’s been starved for it and he’s been in the dark, but now he has thoughts and feelings that have been suppressed for so long, and he’s alive again, himself again, when he’s only been drifting looking for himself all these years.

“They do.” He strokes Eddie’s face, barely pulls back from him. “We will. I-- I will, I’ll make everything work for you, just come home with me.”

“Oh, Richie…” Eddie sighs, and Eddie nods, and Eddie tucks himself in against Richie’s chest like he’s already home. Richie is never going to let him go.

And at the same time

Richie can’t stomach the piles of Ladies Home Journals and Highlights for Childrens, and as it turns out, he can’t handle the one slim volume of poetry he finds in the waiting room, either. He’d started by reading The Bells out loud, because the silent waiting room had been driving him crazy, and he’s never been a man who could keep his mouth shut for long, and the thing about The Bells is that it’s fun to read out loud, the rhythm of the words feels good, keeping time time time in a sort of runic rhyme and all that. And it’s fine, it makes waiting more bearable, except even that isn’t long enough for the others to wash the blood off, steal some spare scrubs, and join him, and so he turns the page and keeps on reading out to the empty room.

“But our love it was stronger by far than the love, of those who were older than we-- of many far wiser than we-- and neither the angels in Heaven above, nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” His breath hitches. He doesn’t have the poem committed to memory, he doesn’t have many poems committed to memory-- short doggerel verses, yes, but any long poems he might have once memorized for school he’s since forgotten, except in bare snatches.

He doesn’t have the poem memorized and yet he has the gist of how it ends, a fleeting unwanted memory of how it ends, not that it matters, because he’d been ready to break down over the beginning, too, over ‘I was a child and she was a child’, over ‘so that her highborn kinsmen came and bore her away from me’, and he has a picture in his mind that might have been an illustration in some book and might not have been, of a boy or a man laying across a stone sarcophagus and weeping, and it had inspired some feeling in him then, but the way anything did when he had no life experience whatsoever to measure poetic grief against. And now everything is different.

He tosses the book down when the other two men emerge, dressed like they had been before, sans blood, the two of them with dark hair and thick glasses and the same sort of body language, they’re strangers but they could be brothers. 

His nerves are ramped up as the three of them head up, wondering what state he’ll find Eddie in, and it’s not the room he expected, but he hardly cares, he doesn’t care, because there’s Eddie, sitting in the center of the sofa with two pillows behind him to prop him up, with a little shy smile and his eyes wide and dark behind his glasses.

“Eddie…” He whispers, doesn’t think about it, it just comes out of him. He crosses the room, comes to stand at Eddie’s feet, and Eddie doesn’t, doesn’t stand, but he reaches up his hands and Richie takes them, squeezes them.

“Richie.” His eyes are so _ wet _, his lashes are wet. “I knew you’d come. I knew you would.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I-- It’s good to see you, pal.”

“Richie-- help me up?”

He doesn’t pull himself up by their joined hands, and Richie thinks, suddenly, that it’s because he _ can’t_. He slides his hands along Eddie’s arms, leans in to get a good hold under his arms, where he can’t aggravate any injuries, he’s sure somewhere there must be a rib that was or is cracked at least. Eddie leans heavily against his chest once he gets him on his feet, clings to him to stay upright. He blushes, looking down.

“I-- I might walk, someday. Not-- not any time soon.” He admits. “When he had me-- my spine, I guess, and… But! But I’m here! And it’s… I mean, I’m okay. I’m not fully… I’m not fully paralyzed, I can feel, and that means I can try. With time. With work.”

“Yeah.” Richie lifts him up carefully, carrying him over to the loveseat nearby, where they can have a little room to themselves, where Eddie can lean against him to be supported. “You’re here, we’ll work the rest out. I’ve got you.”

“I can’t drive.” Eddie sniffs. 

“They make cars… they make cars you can drive without your legs. Even if you never-- You could still drive.”

“But not for work.”

“Bet there’s someone who could rig a limo up like that.” Richie’s hand finds its way into Eddie’s hair. “If staying in the office all day bores you to tears. You could drive _ me _around in anything.”

“Move across the country just to drive _ you _ around?”

“Sure. I’ll make it worth your while.” He trails a fingertip down Eddie’s cheek, tilts him to look his way. “Eddie, everything you’ve ever wanted to see, or do, we-- we could. We still could.”

“Everything, huh?”

Richie’s other hand settles on his knee, squeezing gently. “Everything, if you want-- If you meant--”

“I meant.” Eddie’s hand covers his, firm. “I mean… it’s not like I ever wanted to climb Everest.”

“If you did, we’d make it work.”

“Yeah?”

“All-terrain wheels, sure. But I’d rather not climb any mountains, personally, if you’d be just as happy not to.”

“Take me home with you.” Eddie turns, his arms coming up around Richie’s neck. “Rich… take me home with you. You know… you know what I want you to show me. You do, don’t you?”

“I do. I will.” He promises, and then he’s falling into a kiss and it’s never felt so right. “Oh, baby, I should have married you from the start, saved myself thirty years of assorted heartaches.”

Eddie _ giggles _ at that, buries his face against Richie’s neck. “Oh, sure. Never too late-- I’ll wear white.”

“Better marry me real fast if you plan on wearing white for our wedding.” He waggles his eyebrows, not that Eddie can see his face, tucked in against him as he is.

“Richie, guys like us-- guys like us don’t _ get _ weddings.”

“Shh. Sure we do, if that’s something you want. Maybe not in a church, maybe not in a courthouse, maybe not anything anyone else will count, but-- but if you want to get up in front of the people who _ matter_, and if you want to look real cute in a white tuxedo, and if you want to smash cake in my face and dance all night, guys like us… we’ve waited long enough and we deserve it.”

Eddie deserves it. To be celebrated, to be taken care of. Eddie deserves all of that. He deserves the world, and Richie wants to give it to him. He’s done keeping that part of himself quiet, burying it under a life he never really wanted. Coming out has its risks, but he’s ready… he’s ready to take them if it means taking the rewards, if it means taking care of the man he’s loved since childhood.

And at the same time

Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. It’s the sole thought that occupies Richie’s mind now, it pounds in his head in time with his heartbeat. As he washes away the blood and the chill of the river and anything else that might have clung to him over the course of his very weird day. A lot of sweat.

The moment he’s dressed, he’s heading for the front desk, for the walk towards Eddie, alive this time, strong and stable. He holds the strip of photos like a talisman in one hand, and finally the door swings open and--

And nothing but Eddie even matters, Eddie rising to his feet with the opening of the door, hand to his heart, his mouth a serious line and his eyes saying it all. He’s always been like that… he could frown or smile when he didn’t mean it, or keep himself neutral if he liked, often, but his eyes were the deep, dark windows to his soul, they never hid a thing. 

Whether or not Richie could read them completely was a separate matter, but the eyes themselves, they were wells of emotion, always. No matter how hard he might have tried to be stoic at any given moment, Eddie was anything but, and Richie loved that about him. He still does. The sweetness he liked to keep hidden in a group, and the fire he was so much freer with when it was the Losers, and the sadness he never wanted to burden them with. And the laughter he hated to admit to… and maybe, just maybe, all the same things Richie had also been desperate to hide once.

“Eddie--” He holds the photo strip out, only for Eddie to meet him halfway across the room, hitting him with a hug.

“Rich.” And Eddie ignores the photos in favor of pulling him in for a kiss, and that…

Well, that’s okay.

Richie’s never been kissed the way Eddie kisses him, he’s never kissed anyone the way he kisses Eddie back. He’s kissed, sure, but it’s never been _ good_. How could it have been, when he’s never allowed himself… He’s never allowed himself the luxury of kissing another man, not like this. Once, backstage, hanging with a group of young comedians and letting himself be talked into gay chicken. Joke was on that guy, he guesses, but it hadn’t been a good kiss. He’d won, the other guy had pulled back from it, surprised, and the fact that Richie’s fear of being caught out made him gag had served to convince the guys that he had not been into it. Hell, it was so bad he actually kind of offended the guy who hadn’t wanted to really kiss him in the first place, who had thought ‘gay’ stood alone as a punchline. It hadn’t been good because it wasn’t _ allowed _ to be good.

Kissing Eddie is _ good_. It feels good that Eddie had initiated the kiss, to know that Eddie wants it, wants him, but it feels even better when Eddie hands the reins to him, when he melts into the hand that Richie gently curves around his neck, the fingers sliding up into short hair. There’s a little back and forth, Eddie taking control back one moment, with probing tongue and sharp-but-careful teeth, giving it back the next and all but swooning into his arms the way he used to dream about… Okay, the way he’s been dreaming about again, since his memories started to come back and he saw him again, all grown up and still as cute as ever, but in a much more adult way.

Still small, just small enough. Small enough to wrap his arms around, lean over. Small enough that one of his hands seems to span so much territory, and fuck, is that hot. And it would be one thing if it was _ only _hot, but it’s not. It’s not just sexy, though, it’s… it’s weird, maybe, or it’s definitely weird, the way it makes him feel all warm. Because small things are cute, he guesses, but that doesn’t feel like enough of an explanation for the strength of feeling. Because he wants to wrap him up in his arms and protect him? A little, maybe. After Eddie technically very much died saving his life, he thinks it’s the least he could do, to want to protect him. But he’s always wanted that. Not to hide him away from the world, no, just to shield him from the blows as they come. To be with him, to have his back, to be the one he trusts, to shield him… to get to display his love and devotion somehow. And okay, maybe he’d entertained a few youthful fantasies where he would get hurt, even badly, in Eddie’s defense, and then Eddie would tenderly nurse him back to health… 

Maybe he’s not one hundred percent over those fantasies, actually, because he’s had a hell of a day and the thought of getting to mutually fuss over each other back in his hotel room is powerfully appealing. 

“Hi to you, too.” He says at last, when they stop, when Eddie feels the need to breathe. Richie feels a little lightheaded himself, but he thinks he could go right on feeling that way. 

“Rich.” Eddie pushes their faces together, and Richie leans down to let him, hears the tremor in his voice.

“Eddie…”

“You’re _ here_. God, fuck, you’re _ here_.”

“Where else would I be?” He sniffs. “Hey, someone’s got to drag you back home so you can make an honest woman out of my mother.”

“I have to get a divorce first.” Eddie says, and his voice is a whisper, and it’s not just a joke response, it’s… “Have you got room on your couch for a guy who’s walking out on his wife?”

“Room in my bed, if you want it.” Richie pulls back, so that he can actually hand over the photo strip. 

“I want it.” Eddie’s hand strokes over his, before he takes the little line of pictures. “Do you think we can keep this, out in the real world?”

“If we can’t, I’ll take you to a photobooth.” He promises. 

“They still have those?”

“Yeah. Now they’ve got filters and shit. We’ll probably be the only forty year old men to use one. I think forty year old men stopped going into photobooths together when polaroids were invented. As long as I get to keep _ you _ out in the real world.” He slides a thumb over the scar on Eddie’s cheek, his touch gentle. “How do you feel?”

“Surprisingly good.” Eddie chuckles, still giving frequent glances down to the pictures. “I was so crazy about you, when we were kids. I really was. I was such a little _ shit _ whenever you paid attention to anyone else but me.”

“I never noticed.” Richie laughs, and kisses his cheek, quick and light. “I was usually paying attention to you. Sometimes I tried to pretend I wasn’t. You’ve kind of been the love of my life since before I knew what love was.”

“I cried when she ripped the real one up, you know.” He admits, leaning into Richie again, perfectly-sized to snuggle into his chest. “Ran up and slammed my door and cried myself to sleep, like I was losing you all over again. That was… I was-- I was old enough to understand things, then. What she meant sometimes when she talked about you, why she didn’t want me to see you. And I remember wishing… I remember wishing I could go back to not knowing. And I remember getting so angry, that she would try to make it sound dirty, you and me. When I was hurting so much, she still made it sound so dirty. I told her… I couldn’t admit it to myself, it hurt enough to lose a friend, I couldn’t admit what I felt, no matter how obvious it got, that you were different and I was different with you. But I remember when she took your pictures and your address and tore it all up before I could even write a letter, I told her she didn’t know what love is.”

“Little badass.” Richie chuckles, and kisses him again, smiles into it. “Well, you taught _ me _ what love is.”

“Richie…” Eddie reels him back in for more, and so Richie kisses him _ hard_, grips his waist hard and presses close. Kisses him until he feels pliant and relaxed.

There’s an armchair, not so far from where they stand, and it offers them a little more distance from the others, so Richie brings Eddie with him, brings Eddie into his lap. There’s almost enough room to squeeze in side-by-side, but having Eddie in his lap is so much cozier.

“It’s funny…” Eddie sighs, leaning back against his chest. 

“Hm?”

“How there’s three of us, but we’re… different. We died different. It makes you wonder how many universes there are and how many we died in, and-- and how many times you--”

Richie looks over at the other pairs, and the penny drops.


End file.
